


There's No Coming Back

by georgialeigh



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 22:24:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/997628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/georgialeigh/pseuds/georgialeigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesse settles in Anchorage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's No Coming Back

She could see the pain in his eyes the second he walked into her shop, head hung, thick beard. She wondered who he was running from, or trying to hide from.

“I’m Jesse,” he introduced himself. He has light eyes. She’s a sucker for guys with light eyes. 

“Cain,” she smiled.

“Like Cain and Abel?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah. First ever murderer, isn’t that a nice thing to name your daughter? The first ever hell-raiser,” she rolled her eyes. He smirked. 

“He killed his brother, right?”

“Yeah. I was a twin,” she blushes. He nods somberly.

“I’ve killed people, too,” he bites his lip. Somehow, this doesn’t alarm her. He doesn’t seem threatening now.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I um, don’t worry. I haven’t… in a long time,” he coughs. 

“So… what can I do for you today, Jesse?”

“I wanted to get a tattoo… I saw it on this guy once, he called it a mandala…” She nodded.

“I have a couple of designs. This is mine,” she pulled the collar of her v-neck to the side and showed him her tattoo on her shoulder. Her mentor had done it for her when she first started working, after she came back from rehab.

“I like that one,” he ran his finger over it. She made note that he had clean nails and calloused fingers. She could really get behind that. She rifels around under the counter for a second and procures a binder and flips around for a minute before finding a page with three different designs.

“I think I like yours, if that’s cool?” He asks, probably genuinely worried she won’t do it.

“Cool. Let me draw up the stencil. You wanna wait or come back?” 

“I’ll wait.”

\---

An hour later, the tattoo gun is piercing his skin but he barely feels the pain - not after everything he’s been through. She talks to him while she does it. She grew up in Detroit, got addicted to painkillers in middle school, went to rehab, it didn’t work, her drug dealing brother paid for her to do outward bound, and she decided to stay up here in Alaska, where the program had taken her originally. She worked and saved her money and her brother paid her rent for the first couple of months and eventually he bought her a small house, where she still lives. Said even though she hated the fact that her brother was still in that world, and that the very thing that almost killed her was also helping her survive, now. Jesse was fascinated with her. She has beautiful blonde hair and light bluish greenish eyes and long, long black eyelashes. He could stare at her forever. Her beauty distracts him from everything… the constant ache in his bones, every day looking over his shoulder expecting either Walt or Todd to be standing there waiting for him. 

It costs him $450, which is not a big deal, he has two of the barrels of Walt’s money in his basement that were in the car he stole from Jack Welker’s guys. He’ll have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life. He’s not sure how long that’s going to be. Some mornings he thinks it would be easier just to die and face Mr. White on the other side. The tattoo covers the scarring on his ribcage where there is probably still bone fragments floating around, ready to puncture a lung at any second, thanks to Todd and his steel-toed boots. 

“It looks good, Jesse,” she smiles. She bandages him up and her fingers on his skin give him goosebumps.

“Thanks, yours does, too.” He smiles. He doesn’t smile a lot. He likes this girl, though.

“I’d hope so, you know, since it’s the same one,” she giggles and leads him to the front lobby area. “Oh, hey, Chico, this is Jesse…” The dude is huge, like, Huell huge.

“Hey, man,” they shake hands. 

“She’s something, isn’t she?” Chico smiles and heads into the back area. 

“He your boyfriend?” Jesse asks. Why does he care?

“Nah. Business partner. There’s another guy and girl, too, but they’re on their honeymoon,” she smiles. “She got knocked up two months ago.” Jesse chuckles. He remembers the first girl he got pregnant - Sarah Sharp, sophomore year of high school. She got an abortion and he had to fork out $300. He’s always felt guilty about it.

“I got a girl pregnant once,” he says. “We were sixteen. She um, ended it though.” Cain nods.

“So, where you live around here?”

“Um, Hillside East?” He’s not sure if that’s what it’s called. No one really talks to him. “Stroganof Drive.”  
“Oh, cool. I have friends that live up that way. Right at the bottom of the mountain, huh?” She’s writing out his invoice and stamping it paid.

“I mean, I only just moved here so uh, I haven’t met a lot of people yet…” 

“You should come out to Darwin’s tonight. I’ll be your wing woman,” she winks. He doesn’t want her to be his wing woman. He wants her. It startles him for a second, this thought process, he hasn’t wanted anyone in so long. 

He agrees to meet her and her friends at the bar that night. He wants to explore the city, so he drives around for a long time in the Chevy Cheyenne he bought in Montana after he burned Jack’s car in an abandoned parking lot.

He stops and has dinner at a diner near the bar and talks to the waitress at the counter. She shows him pictures of her two kids and her husband’s dogsled team.

By eight o’clock, he’s at the bar with a pint of pretty good craft beer and Cain’s hugging him with her sleeves of tattoos and her Smith & Wesson t-shirt, which he thinks is pretty badass. He doesn’t understand how she’s not freezing, but he thinks she’s probably just used to the cold by now. He likes having his sherpa-lined fleece and his thermal shirt on. He’s thin, he realizes - not like how he used to be, all skin and bones, but he’s without a nice layer of fat to keep him a little warmer, at least. 

“This is Angela and Margo and Cassidy…” she introduces him to them. They appear to be nice enough, and he finds himself loosening up after a second and third beer. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to get home. His house is half an hour away out in the boonies of Anchorage, thanks a lot vacuum salesman asshole. The girls do most of the talking. They’re flirtatious but wary, almost like he’s already been marked. He makes a couple of sly remarks here and there that have them laughing their heads off. He tells them about his fake hometown of Phoenix, Arizona and how cool it is living in the desert and being isolated and all the Native Americans.

“I’m half Native American,” Cain says. “Doesn’t really show much, though,” she laughs. Jesse wonders how she’s allowed to drink as a recovering painkiller addict. Maybe alcohol was never her poison, though, just like him. 

They end up at the back of the bar near the bathrooms. He went to go take a leak and then there she was, leaning against the wall next to the pay phone, smirking with her arms crossed. He made the move to kiss her first. Her lips are soft and full and make his heart less heavy, not exactly light, but not so heavy and weighed down with the pain of losing not only Jane, but Andrea, too, and his family, and Mike, and Gale… He can’t help but always run down the list of people that he puts himself at fault for. He knows his family is okay. But he worries about Jake, smoking weed so young. He doesn’t want his brother to end up like him. He wishes he could call them, just to check in, but he knows the house phone is probably bugged and that there is definitely a warrant out for his arrest. He had hoped once they got the great Heisenberg the news would die down, but it didn’t.  
“I like you,” she whispers against his lips. He grins as he kisses her again. He feels almost like his old self. 

“I like you,” he replies.

They leave her friends and go to a 24-hour coffee shop down the street to sober up. She informs him that this is her usual MO before heading home to her big old lonely house. “My brother went a little above and beyond on my house. It’s like, way too big for just me. I think he’s going to use it as a safe house one day.”

Jesse realizes what she means when he drives her home. The house looks like the Schraders, kind of, from the outside. It’s just as big on the inside, too. Marble countertops, hardwood floors, stainless steel appliances. 

“Check out the radiant heat,” she slides off her ankle boots and reveals her patterned pink and white socks, dancing her toes on the tile floor of the kitchen. He follows her actions, and almost laughs because she can clearly handle the cold much better in her thin socks. His thick wool socks look almost dumb next to her petite little feet.

There’s a fireplace in her bedroom and a master bathroom too, with a huge bath tub and glass enclosed shower. This beats the shit out of his little cabin, he thinks.

She goes into her walk-in closet and finds a pair of black sweatpants for Jesse to wear. He unbuttons his fleece but leaves his thermal on. She emerges from her bathroom in a t-shirt and pair of blue lace boyshorts. He never thought he’d say he liked these underwear more than a thong. 

They climbed into the bed but she made no move to try to start things, but he was okay with that. He wasn’t one to fuck on the first date. Well, he kind of was, but he was trying to figure out if he could maybe try things differently with her.

\---

He woke up to the smell of bacon and his stomach rumbled from hunger. He padded down to the kitchen and there she was in her t-shirt and underwear standing in front of the stove frying up some bacon and scrambled eggs. 

“Morning,” he says. She turns and smiles at him. He’s happy her legs aren’t covered in tattoos.

“Morning, sunshine,” she replies. “I hope you like breakfast.” He nods and sits at the breakfast counter. The memory of making Jane breakfast comes back to him and he almost throws up but he breathes for a minute and she ignores him, sitting there, mid-panic attack. He’s grateful she doesn’t notice him. She puts a paper plate of food in front of him and a mug of coffee. He likes it black. Like Mr. White. 

They eat quietly together. She’s an awesome cook. Bacon’s crispy and eggs aren’t too wet. He thinks she used seasoning, too, but he can’t place it. The coffee is amazing, too. 

“You have to take me to my car once I get ready for work,” she commands. He nods. “I’ll be showering if you um, need anything,” she winks and prances off to her master suite. He sits there for exactly three seconds before chasing after her. She jumps a second when he puts his hands on her bare hips. She’s waiting for the hot water to get to the the shower. 

“What, a guy’s gotta shower, too…” He kisses her neck and she trembles under his touch. He’s hard, so hard, pressed up against her bare ass. 

“Hmm. Is that a rocket in your pocket or are you just excited to see me?” She laughs, pulling him under the hot stream of water. Her skin is so soft and her bath soap smells of peaches and citrus and he washes her hair and puts his soapy fingers to good use on her. She’s a trembling mess by the time they’re drying each other off with her big, fluffy towels that have apparently been warming up in a special heating cabinet under the sinks.

She pulls on jeans and a cable knit sweater and some knee-high boots and then wraps herself up in a down-filled full-length hooded coat with the Patagonia symbol on it. 

“If you ever see my driver’s license, it’s going to say my name is Peter McKinley. Just so you know,” he tells her as they pull out of her driveway. She nods.

“What’s your real name?”

“Jesse Pinkman.”

“Huh.” She pauses. “Wait no… you’re not… that guy? From… wait, oh my God, you are!” She realizes. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell. You looked so.. sad in all your pictures on the news.”

“Like I said. Rough year.”

“They said you were held prisoner by some Neo-Nazis?” He nods. 

“I got my cook up to 96.8%. That’s all they wanted from me, guaranteed quality,” he replies. “They kicked the shit out of me to get it though.”

“Really?” She bites her lip.

“Yeah. Mr White um, taught me… he was like a chemistry genius. The dudes in Mexico couldn’t get anywhere near his level. He… lost his shit though. His family found out about him. His brother in law got shot… when they took me. He ran away. Left his wife to clean up after him. I made sure they got their money before I left, though.”

“That was nice of you.”

“The dude treated me like his son for the majority of our time together. Things ended badly. I didn’t want to cook anymore. He was losing everything. Everything fell apart around him. He got so greedy and psychotic…”

They pull up to that tattoo shop. 

“Wanna come in?” She asks. He agrees. 

He remembers Mr. White telling him “this is the first day of the rest of your life, are you going to live in fear?” Jesse shakes his head to himself and then turns to Cain and says, “Yeah, definitely.”


End file.
